Keynote Presentations

Maddy Dychtwald

Age Wave Co-Founder

Maddy Dychtwald is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and thought leader on the age wave—and how longevity and the ascent of women are transforming the marketplace, the workplace, and retirement. A successful entrepreneur for more than 30 years, she co-founded Age Wave, the world’s leader in understanding and addressing the far-reaching impacts of our aging population. Since then, Maddy and the Age Wave team have worked with more than half of the Fortune 500 in industries ranging from pharmaceuticals and medical technology to financial services and consumer marketing.

Maddy has led numerous studies on women and money, including the landmark Women, Money and Power sponsored by Allianz and, most recently, Women and Financial Wellness: Beyond the Bottom Line for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. In addition, she has been deeply involved in more than 25 thought leadership research studies on aging, longevity, retirement, health, family, caregiving, housing and leisure which have cumulatively garnered more than twelve billion media impressions worldwide.

She is the author of three books, Cycles: How We Will Live, Work, and Buy (voted Book of the Year by the National Community Colleges Association), Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better, and the children’s/young readers’ book Gideon’s Dream: A Tale of New Beginnings. Currently, she is writing on a new book that combines her professional and personal interests: Ageless Aging: 50 Simple Hacks to Reboot Your Life.

As a member of The Wall Street Journal’s Expert Panel on Retirement, Maddy’s posts on leadership, wealth management, and financial planning have topped the most-read lists for their categories in 2017 and 2018. Her insights and research have also been featured in prominent media outlets, including Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Newsweek, Time, Fox Business News, CNBC, and NPR.

Having watched both her mother and mother-in-law battle dementia, Maddy is committed to eradicating this horrific disease. She is a co-founder of the non-profit Women Against Alzheimer’s and serves as a board member of the non-profit BrightFocus Foundation, which funds cutting-edge research to cure diseases of the brain and eye. She is also a founding member of the XPRIZE Alzheimer’s Brain Trust, which is working to globally crowdsource innovative solutions to end Alzheimer’s.

Maddy, now an empty nester, has been a working mom throughout her career. She is passionate about her family as well as about longevity as both a demographic phenomenon and a personal journey. She and her husband Ken were recently awarded the prestigious Esalen Prize for their outstanding contributions to advancing the human potential of aging men and women worldwide.

About AgeWave

Age Wave is the nation’s foremost thought leader on issues relating to an aging population, with great expertise in the profound business, social, healthcare, financial, workforce and cultural implications. Under the leadership of Founder/CEO Dr. Ken Dychtwald, Age Wave has a unique understanding of the body, mind, hopes and demands of new generations of maturing consumers and workers and their expectations, attitudes, hopes, and fears regarding retirement.